On a frosty winter morning in Birmingham, 80-year-old Mohammed Bashir stands outside his terraced house in Small Heath, broom in hand, facing yet another mound of rubbish. For nearly a year, this daily ritual has become routine for Bashir and countless others across the city, as Birmingham’s ongoing bin strike drags into its 50th week. “Look at the condition we’re living in. I’ve lived here for 64 years, I came to this country at 16 – I’ve never seen it this bad. I’m sick,” Bashir told The Guardian. His frustration is echoed by residents citywide, many of whom are left to manage their own waste as bin collections remain sporadic and recycling services have been entirely suspended since early January 2025.
The roots of Birmingham’s waste crisis stretch back to the start of 2025, when a dispute erupted between the Labour-led City Council and members of the Unite union over the loss of the Waste Recycling and Collection Officer (WRCO) role and concerns about pay. As agency workers were drafted in to cover for striking staff, “go slow” protests at depots prevented bin lorries from leaving, resulting in a staggering 17,000 tonnes of rubbish piling up on city streets by March. The chaos forced the council to declare a major incident, according to The Guardian.
Though a court injunction in May 2025 temporarily eased depot blockades and restored some semblance of order, the underlying dispute persisted. As of late December 2025, regular bin collections have yet to resume, with the council relying on a reduced agency workforce. The situation worsened in December when agency bin workers staged their own strike, further hampering efforts to clear the backlog. For many residents, especially those in densely populated and deprived areas, the crisis has been particularly acute. “How is one bin enough?” Bashir asks, pointing out that his own home is shared by eight family members. “I can guarantee you that you can go into every house on this street and it is overcrowded with people. There are more than six people, seven people, eight people. One bin is not enough, is it?”
The result has been a surge in fly-tipping and overflowing bins, with residents forced to cram all their waste—including cardboard, cans, and bottles—into a single general waste bin. Noor Ahmed, a local resident caring for her ill husband, described to The Guardian how the bus stop outside her house has become a dumping ground for rubbish. “It’s a health and safety hazard, and there’s a very bad smell. I’ve had rats in my garden, even in my kitchen,” she said. Ahmed and her neighbors have organized informal groups to help older residents take rubbish to the tip, but the process requires online booking—a challenge for those, like Bashir, who struggle with English literacy.
The environmental toll has been severe. With recycling collections on hold for nearly a year, Birmingham’s recycling rate has plummeted to a mere 14%, far below both the city’s 35% target and England’s average of 44%. Of the 90,667 tonnes of rubbish collected between July and September, just 12,471 tonnes was recycled, with much of the rest incinerated. “It is the biggest local authority in the country in population terms, so anything that happens in Birmingham affects 1.2 million people. And there is still no recycling collection,” John Newson of Birmingham Friends of the Earth told The Guardian. He warned that the disruption could have lasting effects on residents’ recycling habits and trust in the system.
Meanwhile, pest control businesses have reported a dramatic surge in rodent activity as uncollected rubbish accumulates. Robert Charlton, who runs a pest control firm in Birmingham, described 2025 as his busiest year yet. “It’s starting to pick up again because rodents are looking for food and shelter, so I’m getting more phone calls,” he said. At the height of the crisis, Charlton was working 12-hour days, dealing with infestations that sometimes involved catching more than 20 rodents in a single house. “I would say kittens, yeah, I do believe that,” he said, when asked if the rats were as big as cats.
For many, the crisis has exposed deeper issues of inequality and neglect. Residents in areas like Small Heath and Balsall Heath, where high-density living and large families are common, have borne the brunt of the chaos. Community leader Shafaq Hussain noted that efforts to educate residents about recycling have been undermined by the prolonged suspension of services. “It took a long time for us to do a lot of educating in the community about recycling, about the distinction between the two bins – but it has been almost a year now without that. So the environmental impact is very messy,” he told The Guardian. Hussain has called for central government intervention to resolve the dispute, lamenting the lack of transparency in negotiations and the sense that residents’ voices have been sidelined.
On the picket line, striking workers remain resolute. Matthew Reid, a bin lorry driver and Unite convener, insisted, “We’re committed to see it through to the end. We can’t go through 11 months of what we’ve been through, and put the city through, to get no results at the end of it.” The union is demanding pay protection for the remaining bin workers and the reinstatement of the WRCO role, which the council argues is both a cost-cutting measure and a response to equal-pay liability risks. Years of costly equal-pay claims have contributed to the council’s financial woes, leading it to declare itself “bankrupt.”
The direct costs and lost income from garden waste alone have cost the council at least £14 million, BirminghamWorld reported. Yet, as Councillor Majid Mahmood acknowledged, “There is a significant cost, we can’t hide behind that fact. We want to bring [the industrial action] to an end.”
Against this backdrop, the council has announced a sweeping transformation of waste services, set to begin in June 2026. The overhaul will see household rubbish collections move from weekly to fortnightly, with the introduction of weekly food waste collections and a second recycling bin for paper and cardboard. The rollout will be phased, starting with Perry Barr and followed by Lifford and Atlas, and is expected to take about 12 months. Residents in flats above shops and multiple occupancy properties may not see changes until late 2026 or early 2027. Crucially, the council insists that the rollout will proceed “regardless of the strike situation.”
Not everyone is convinced. Opposition councillors have questioned the wisdom of introducing a new system amid ongoing disruption. “Residents will rightly ask how on earth Labour can justify pushing ahead with a completely new waste system when they can’t even get the current one working,” said Conservative councillor Robert Alden. Yet, Labour’s Rob Pocock described the changes as the “biggest transformation in our household waste collection service for at least 25 years,” promising an end to the city’s “woefully underperforming recycling service.”
As Birmingham looks ahead to its waste service reboot, the scars of the past year remain vivid. Residents like Basmin Khan, who has documented the crisis on social media, are calling for more investment, transparency, and action. “Nobody should ever think this is normal,” she said. “We are the UK’s second city. It’s a disgrace. Everyone says we’re bankrupt or we’re poor. For goodness sake, the UK is in the G7. We should have enough money to be able to keep our streets clean.”
With the city’s future waste strategy set, but the present still mired in rubbish and recrimination, Birmingham’s struggle offers a cautionary tale about the costs—financial, environmental, and human—of a system pushed to its breaking point.
